Thursday, March 31, 2011

Fifteen

I'm a bit late to the party.....but how can it be that there is now a 15 year old living in our house? Last week was Finn's birthday and we celebrated with a giant cake. Birthdays around here mean that you get to pick out the cake and of course write the dinner menu. He choose chocolate and vanilla for the cake and we all went out for a sushi dinner.

If you look closely enough at the cake, you can see how Nuala helped with pretty much every layer......see the nibbles?


Saoirse was also a big help in the kitchen, she stood on a stool at the counter the entire time I was frosting the cake and I kept hearing her saying "Mmmmmmm" in between long drawn out sighs that sounded sort of day dreamy. It took me a little while to figure out what she was up to.



Frosting and renegade powdered sugar and tiny fingers just the right size for cleaning the counter tops with. Yum.



Don't worry, there was still plenty of frosting left for the cake and the birthday boy.





I know I say this every time another birthday rolls around, and that's pretty often in this house, but how can it be? How can it be that this little boy is now a young man?



How is it that childhood seems to slip away so quickly? It really does seem like he was just 7 years old and yet here we are closer to college than grade school and while my heart is overflowing with love and pride and awe, I am still in a bit of shock that this is the same child I met over 7 years ago.





We got him an iPod Touch, something I'm sure most of his friends have already had for ages, and he seemed excited about it. Now we just have to load it up with all the coolest games.







Happy birthday Finn, I hope that you know how incredible and special you are, not only to me, but to everyone in this family.



Hmmmm....what else, I'm just going to play a quick game of "catch up" here and pretend like I haven't been blog slacking for the past 2 weeks. Micah had a sock hop at his school last week. We slicked his hair back and he looked pretty cool in his jeans and white t-shirt.



The girls had "crazy hair and sock" day at their school that same day and while at first they were skeptical about my vision for Sidhe's hair, it wound up being a big success. In fact when they returned home that afternoon, Maija asked me to do hers the same way.



Apparently the wig didn't go over as well as the big buns did, although it was pretty crazy.



Other than that, it's just life as usual around here.







There's always something to do. Like, help mom make lentil soup perhaps?



Well, soup and cookie bars....



Maija is pretty awesome in the kitchen.





She even let's Nuala help.



I wish I had a mouthful of graceful words to add to this photo sequence, something inspired and shiny, because this moment in the kitchen, watching my daughters stirring soup together was exactly that; shiny. But I don't and I'll just say that this was yet another reminder of all the beauty in life that I have to be grateful for, because there is in fact beauty to be found nearly everywhere, even in lentils.







I wish I could protect all of these little people from all of the heartbreak that the world will inevitably toss their way. I wish I could take away the heartbreak that they've already encountered so far. I know this is impossible. I know that it's a silly thing to wish for, but my instincts as a mother and a step mother tell me to protect, I can't help it. I wonder if you always feel that way about your children, even after they're long grown and out building lives of their own?

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